Belize Aggressor IV
Travel Coordination:
We dove on the Sun Dancer II in December 2012, and we really enjoyed the boat, and the diving. It was a second for me on the Peter Hughes boat in Belize (I dove years ago on the original Dancer boat, which sadly sank in a hurricane), and I can say that this time the diving was even better (or at least it seemed better). The Dancer crew were at the airport, ready to take our bags and whisk us over to the boat. Similarly, on the way out, the Dancer staff had a shuttle ready to take us back to the airport (they actually pre-arranged for us to have access to the poolside bar of the local Radisson hotel in Belize City for a couple of hours before heading to catch our flights home).
Accommodations / Food:
Rooms on live aboard dive yachts are always a bit tight, but truthfully, our rooms were really comfortable, with enough room for all of our "stuff". The meals on the yacht were very good, just like you would expect on a Dancer live aboard yacht.
Diving:
Like any good live aboard, Peter Hughes makes the diving easy. Your gear awaits on the back of the boat, and you can just roll into the water -- up to 5 dives a day. That's why liveaboards cost more, but for ease and logging a lot of dives, it is a good deal. For the money, the Sun Dancer II was actually pretty reasonably priced (especially when you factor in that all your food is included)
Belize has the 2nd largest barrier reef in the world, and the diving is really quite nice, with a variety of both small macro, photography creatures, (nudibranchs, sea horses, flaming tongue, small reef fish) and larger creatures, like moray eels, reef sharks, lots of turtles, eagle rays, sting rays, and barracuda. The diving overall was easy, with relatively calm waters, and the water was around 78 F, so I was perfectly comfortable in my 3mm wetsuit.
For a lot of people, the high point of a Belize dive trip is to dive the Blue Hole. Maybe I'm cynical but color me unimpressed. I liked diving there, but it is just a cave. If I want to see stalactites and stalagmites, I'll go to Luray caverns. My favorite dive sites were Long Caye Ridge and Long Caye Wall (where the reef just seemed very lush), and No Coco, where I got to play with a very sweet turtle.
You can check out my video to get a better idea of the diving was like:
